Conventionally, when controlling characteristics of products such as vehicles or household electric appliances, the characteristics of the products to be controlled are decided so as to suit as wide a range of users as possible by taking tastes and usage patterns of target users who are expected to use the products into consideration in the development and design phases. However, since the user who will use the above-mentioned products have their own individuality and vary widely in tastes, it is practically impossible to provide characteristics which will satisfy all the users even if the products are developed and designed by taking the tastes of the target users into consideration as described above. To solve this problem, methods are followed which change control characteristics in such a way as to satisfy users by estimating tastes and usage patterns of the users after sales using optimizing algorithms such as a GA.
To optimize control characteristics using an optimizing algorithm, either an autonomous evaluation method or interactive evaluation method is adopted: the former optimizes control characteristics by autonomously evaluating digitalized control results based on predetermined evaluation criteria and the latter optimizes control characteristics interactively by presenting control results to the user.
The autonomous evaluation method, which makes evaluation based on predetermined evaluation criteria, can optimize control characteristics in a relatively short period of time, but is not suitable if evaluation criteria according to which optimal values correspond to user tastes vary with the user. In contrast, the interactive evaluation method is suitable for cases in which evaluation criteria according to which optimal values correspond to user tastes vary with the user. However, it is not possible to get many evaluation from the user in a short period of time. Thus, it takes a relatively long time to optimize, for example, all the control characteristics of a vehicle when this method is used alone.
The present invention has been made in view of such prior art problems yet to be solved. Its object is to provide an optimal solution search device, algorithm-based optimizing controller, and optimal solution search program which can search for an optimal solution in line with user requirements with reduced time requirements for optimization.